Sunday, January 27, 2008
Helium wasn't first discovered on Earth. The first place we found it was on the Sun. It was first "discovered" by Joseph Lockyer, who didn't so much discover it as propose that some as-yet-unknown mystery element Helium was responsible for some unexplained absorption lines in the visible spectrum of our sun. Twenty five years later it was discovered on Earth, as well.
He was knighted for his discovery in 1897. From what I have read he was a good scientist with many contributions to knowledge from which I have no doubt personally benefited. His knighthood should remind us to be humble with regard to that which we think we know. He was honoured for (now read this slowly) finding the second most abundant element in the whole universe. In all of recorded human history, we hadn't noticed the second most abundant thing in the whole freaking universe. Wow that's pretty embarrassing to any technological hubris we might have had. It's like living at the beach and not noticing there's sand until years later when somebody says "hey, look what I found under my feet". I'm pretty sure that's not the last time something like that is going to happen, either.
Thanks, Sir Lockyer, for striking a massive outward dent into the limits of the opaque shell of human knowledge. It turns out that ignorance is the most abundant thing in the universe, and you banished some of it.
Burton MacKenZie www.burtonmackenzie.com
2 comments:
I think you are overstating the embarrassment factor, sure, it's more abundant than the sand on the beach, but it's also colourless, tasteless, inert, and odourless! And it's normally a gas, so you're not going to trip over it or get wet in it.
Me overstate something? That's the craziest thing somebody has said in the entire age of the universe!! ;)
I don't think the embarrassment factor is that overstated, because it's not directed to us individually or even as a species - it is directed at any technological hubris we might have had.
An example of this hubris is the (apocryphal) story of the patent office head wanting to close the office because "everything had already been invented". The embarrassment isn't for everyday humans, but only for the attitudes of those who think they know everything. It's good to be humble because we don't know it all, and discovering that we hadn't noticed the 2nd most abundant thing in the universe demonstrates that nicely.
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